@rick_777@ben My prediction for the future goes beyond that. Yes, these biomechanical authentication tokens will exist, but they won't be given to the silicon-based intelligent life that we inevitably create, wreaking a ton of havoc on human's everyday lives.

1) You register yourself with your local #certificate authority (something like Verisign, but for people), and they give you a unique anonymous cerificate that can verify your age, gender, country of origin, or whatever facts you wish to state publicly (like, "I've never worked for Agrigen(tm) or Purcal(tm)", altho these would require more expensive paperwork) - 1/6

@ben@KitsuneAlicia The certificate must be encrypted with a secret passphrase, so no one can steal it. 2) using your certificate, you go to the website where they'll give you a unique hash PER SITE, which you'll use and will allow others to verify your partial identity - 2/6

@ben@KitsuneAlicia There should be some PKI in here, perhaps they encrypt your key with your public cert, so only you, who has the private key in the PKI pair, can decrypt the hash. After you submit the hash, the site can verify its digital signature and your account will have "verified facts."

3) Only the site will have access to your personal hash, which means others can't steal it - 3/6

@ben@KitsuneAlicia4) The cert authority must ensure that the same of facts MUST result in the same certificate. That means you can't get sockpuppets to troll or shill. 5) The site can allow you to have more accounts, but they'll use the same hash. This lets you use different accounts for personal and public business, or whatever, but you won't be able to fake your country or gender - 4/6

@ben@KitsuneAlicia6) If a site bans you, they'll ban your anonymous certificate - but not your actual ID because they don't know it. 7) The police could identify you after the police searches for your certificate on the site, which they'll later use to track you at the third party certificate authority. But this should require a Subpoena - 5/6

@ben@KitsuneAlicia Sitess will have no incentive otherwise to share your anonymous certificate with anyone else. This will enable "verified facts" on your user profile, which will prevent political or commercial shilling, while at the same time protecting your privacy. Critiques welcome. 🙂 - 6/6